Read Online Smoked (The Alex Harris Mystery Series) by Elaine Macko - Free Book Online Page A

with a broom.
    Julie Vang shrugged. “There may have been some truth to some of the things she wrote. Stuff is expensive, you know. I need to keep my prices down so I used fillers in some of my dishes. Who was I hurting? People came and they liked what they got and they came back. I bet if you checked, you would find out every restaurants adds stuff.”
    That was not a concept I wanted to explore. I believe what you didn’t know wouldn’t hurt you and I wanted to leave it that way as far as behind-the-scenes in the restaurant business went. I had seen too many documentaries on the restaurant industry and it was a wonder people ever ate out at all.
    “But you were advertising as vegan and you clearly weren’t,” I pointed out to Julie.
    “Where you hear all this stuff from anyway? Who sent you here? Oh, I know. Frank. He and his wife own a restaurant over in Indian Cove. He sent you right? He hated me. Said I was giving vegan and vegetarian restaurants a bad name. Tried to get me to use local produce from area farmers, but they charge too much. Who needs that?” Julie pushed a long strand of dark hair away from her face. “He and his wife wanted to start some sort of, what do you call it, a group of vegetarian restaurant owners to exchange ideas, work together, support local family owned farms, all that crap. Who needs that? I want to sell my food and make money.”
    “So were you upset about the blogs? Did your business die down?” I asked.
    “Nah. I didn’t like what that lady was writing but so what. It was just her opinion, right? Who cares. I changed my menu and now I’m a Vietnamese restaurant. See. Look around. People still come.”
    I looked around A few people still came but then maybe this was as good as it ever got for the Great Wall. It was also an odd time, between lunch and dinner, so maybe the restaurant was doing better than it appeared if it had this many people at this weird hour.
    I left a few minutes later. I didn’t see Julie Vang as someone who took criticism to heart. She just changed things around and moved on. I had a feeling Carol Corliss sent me here more out of a personal vendetta against the restaurant than anything. But Frank Corliss was starting to interest me more. I really needed to find out where he worked.

 
     
     
Chapter Seventeen
     
     
    Having my own business certainly had its perks and one of them was I knew a lot of people. I also knew our database was filled with contacts for every business within a hundred-mile radius.
    As soon as I got back to the office I asked Millie to contact the human resource managers at manufacturing firms in Bridgeport and discreetly find out if any of them had a Frank Corliss working on the loading docks. As Millie was usually the point of contact these people had when they needed to hire an interim employee, I thought she was the best person for the job. Plus I was hoping to get some work done before I left to meet John for dinner.
    “Oh, good, you’re back,” my sister said as she came into my office and sat down.
    “What’s up?”
    “Have you talked with Millie today?” Sam asked.
    “Yeah, just now. I asked her to do something for me. Why?”
    “Did you notice anything?”
    “No. Does she have sea foam green eyes again?” Our office manager had a penchant for dressing for holidays and coordinating her eye color, via contacts, to match her outfits. We hadn’t seen the sea foam eyes in quite a while though a very pretty violet color had made an appearance recently.
    “No. Nothing like that. She’s….well, she’s…”
    “Spit it out,” I said. I could feel myself getting impatient.
    “She’s cranky. There, I said it.” Sam sat up straight, clearly proud of herself for getting this disturbing information out.
    I took an audible gasp. “What? That’s not possible. Millie doesn’t have the cranky gene. She doesn’t have the nasty gene or the petty gene. Are you sure?” This was horrifying news. We counted on Millie